Nudity loves company.
Brooke Shields revealed that she stripped down in solidarity with co-star Benjamin Bratt on the set of their new Netflix movie “Mother of the Bride.” On Friday’s episode of “The View,” the actress explained that she went mostly au natural to comfort her co-star Bratt whose wardrobe for one scene consisted only of a “modesty sock.”
Shields, 58 relayed, “They have these things called modesty socks, which, for a woman, it’s a modesty triangle and they tape it to you, just where the camera’s going to go. For the poor guy, they don’t tape — they just have a little sheath.”
Shields then used her hands to mimic the act of putting the sock on the penis.
Co-host Sara Haines laughed at the suggestive gesture, recommending, “Let’s maybe not use our hands, ladies.”
Meanwhile, the modesty sock piqued Ana Navarro’s carnal curiosity, “I want to know all about the socks. Do the socks come in different sizes?”
Shields felt “empathy” for Bratt in his penis sheath, noting that “he was vulnerable,” which inspired her to meet him in the middle, or the side boob as it were.
“They had to reverse and do my side, and I was like, ‘God, I feel like this is so unfair,’” said Shields. “As a surprise to him, I taped my boobs with those sticky-tape things, and I turned around and dropped my dress just so he didn’t feel like he was the only one.”
Shields’s compassion for Bratt’s bare vulnerability is understandable given the actress’s long, complicated history with nude scenes.
Shields first appeared naked on screen at age 11 in French director Louis Malle’s controversial film “Pretty Baby,” where she made her star turn as a prepubescent New Orleans sex worker.
Shields recalled the experience in her 2023 Hulu documentary “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” admitting, “I think I learned how to compartmentalize at an early age. It was a survival technique.”
In 1980, Shields, then 14, again appeared nude in “The Blue Lagoon,” a sexually charged teen romance about a pair of cousins marooned on a South Pacific island.
A year later, while shooting a sex scene with co-star Martin Hewitt for 1980’s “Endless Love,” Shields experienced on-set abuse at the hands of the film’s director Franco Zeffirelli who was unhappy with her facial expressions
“Zeffirelli kept grabbing my toe and twisting it so I had a look of, I guess, ecstasy,” she said.
“He was hurting me.” Shields added: “I really shut down after that.”
Shields, who previously revealed she was a virgin until she was 22, took a sabbatical from acting to attend Princeton University. She shares two daughters, Rowan, 20 and Grier, 18 with husband Chris Henchy.
In “Mother of the Bride,” Shields, who also produced the movie, stars as Lana, a woman traveling to Thailand to attend her daughter Emma’s (played by Miranda Cosgrove) wedding. Drama abounds when Lana learns that her soon-to-be son-in-law is the biological son of a lover (played by Bratt) who spurned her years before.
“Mother of the Bride” premieres May 9 on Netflix.
